Errors - SEAOTTER

SEAOTTER control-plane errors are JSON. Almost all failures use a detail string; validation errors use FastAPI’s list form. Retry 503 provision failures with backoff; do not retry 4xx without fixing the request.

Error shape

Almost all failures return JSON:

{
  "detail": "Agent not found"
}

Validation errors (missing/invalid fields) use FastAPI’s list form:

{
  "detail": [
    {
      "loc": ["body", "name"],
      "msg": "Field required",
      "type": "missing"
    }
  ]
}

Unhandled server errors return:

{
  "detail": "Internal server error"
}

Status codes you will see

Code	When
`400`	Bad input the schema accepted but the handler rejected
`401`	Missing/invalid Bearer (Clerk JWT or `so_` key)
`402`	Plan capacity exceeded (e.g. too many agents)
`403`	Authenticated but forbidden (member role, Enterprise-only feature)
`404`	Unknown agent, key, or organization
`409`	Conflict with current agent state
`422`	Request body/query failed validation
`429`	Rate limited
`503`	Transient dependency or provision worker failure

Retry guidance

Situation	Guidance
`503` on create / provision path	Safe to retry. Cloud Tasks retries provision workers with backoff; clients may poll `GET /agents/{id}` instead of re-POSTing.
`429`	Back off and retry with jitter; respect plan RPM.
`401` / `403` / `404` / `402`	Do not blind-retry; fix credentials, role, or plan.
`5xx` other than expected 503	Retry with backoff a few times, then surface to the operator.

Idempotency: prefer polling an existing agent id over creating duplicates when a create response was lost after the server accepted the write.